“I just got a disturbing phone call. I cannot believe this dude is gone. He just reached out a couple of weeks ago for me to speak on his documentary about his life.”

Rap mogul Combs, who helped launch Mack’s career wrote “You inspired me and will continue to inspire us. We will always love you. #RIPCraigMack#BadBoy4Life”

Mack was at the forefront of hip-hop’s Golden Age. Born in 1970, Mack’s childhood coincided with the earliest days of hip-hop. By the time he was 12, he was following in the footsteps of LL Cool J and Run-D.M.C. He was at park jams during the inception of the Long Island rap scene, a pre-teen battling other kids, including a young Erick Sermon. After six years of shopping his demo nonstop, he was there at the beginning of Diddy’s Bad Boy empire, one of the shaping forces in rap’s rise from local artform to world domination. “There’s not a label who has not seen or heard of me in their offices,” Mack told the New York Times of his long path to Bad Boy, in a 1995 interview. Sean Combs signed Mack after hearing him freestyle, and not long after the two were off to the races. In fact, Combs himself credited Mack with being “the first artist to release music on Bad Boy.”